It's OK

I spoke to a friend recently about a family member of theirs who's going through a hard time. A mother and adult child had an argument - an ordinary kind of argument - but Mom passed away unexpectedly the next day, so this meant that the last thing that they ever said to each other was angry (and maybe unkind). This sent the child into a tailspin. Child is having a really hard time coping with the idea that they "never got to settle things;" they worry that the relationship is somehow frozen in that angry moment, and can't ever be fixed.

I can't speak for their mom, but I can speak for me. I think a great deal, the older I get, about Aging People Stuff. I probably make people uncomfortable, because I get pretty effusive about telling people that I love them (you've gotta say it!) I also tell my kids what to do if I'm senile, what I want at my funeral, stuff they might need to know.

Here's what my kids, my family, my friends might need to know if I die after we've argued: don't sweat it. Seriously. I won't. Our relationship is what took place over the whole time we knew each other, not on one day.

Plus, if you ever made the mistake of thinking that I never argue with people, give that up right now. I disagree with most people about something. I have very little filter. Pretty much daily, I tell someone that they're wrong, or they tell me that I'm wrong. Plus, I'm a stubborn person, from a long line of stubborn people. Heads get butted, feelings get hurt.

I don't really know what it would look like to always agree with people. I grew up practicing a religion that was different from the other members of my household. I don't belong to the same political party as my husband. There are more people in my life who differ from me than there are people who are similar.

That's undoubtedly why I don't get overwhelmed by differences. I just expect them. And sure, there are people whose company I don't enjoy. But I don't wish harm on any of them. I hope that they live happy, healthy lives. I just don't need to be in the same room with them while they do it. But, lemme tell you, that list is so small, the chance that you personally are on it is next to nothing. And, I can't think of a single person to whom I couldn't be civil - and times that I choose not to be, anyway.

There will be arguments, hurt feelings, the stuff of being human. And that, too, is expected.  So, I don't really need to "settle" things. I'm not waiting for an apology. (If you're waiting for one, know that I'm sorry that your feelings were hurt, sincerely. But you don't need to please me, and I don't need to please you.)

I don't plan on any "saying goodbye" scenes before I die, either. There will be no calling people to my side to impart last words of wisdom or love or anything else. If I think it really needs said, I've said it. I'm not waiting to hear you validate me.

So, look, whatever either of us may have said or done or not, we're good. It's OK.

If your mom or dad or best friend or boss or anyone else left unfinished business, I'm really sure that they want you to let it go. They knew what you wanted to say. It's alright. Don't lose any sleep over it. It doesn't define your life, or theirs.

It's OK.

The Mouths of Babes

One of my dad's favorite stories from my childhood was not my favorite - not because it was embarrassing, but, well, because he got it wrong.

When I was 8, we took an epic road trip, including camping at Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. I loved pretty much everything about that trip - the places, the animals we saw, using the brand new camera that my brother gave me, the keychains that my mom let me buy in gift shops.

One day, we drove by the carcass of a roadkill coyote alongside the highway. "Oh, that's poor old Wile E." my dad said, referring to the Warner Brothers cartoon character.

"No, it's not!" I said, outraged. I was eight years old, after all, and I could not believe that my dad thought that I was too little to realize that a cartoon character was fictional. Did he really think that I couldn't tell the difference between a cartoon that walked on two legs and mail ordered ridiculous weapons and a real live, very familiar animal? Our dog was half coyote! As the youngest child, I was very sensitive to any reference to me being "too young" to understand something. I tried very hard to keep up with the big kids.

My dad misunderstood my outrage. "Oh, no, you're right. I'll bet Wile E. is too smart to get hit. He's just fine," my dad said, fairly bubbling with mirth. He went on to talk to my mom, as if I wasn't right there in the back seat, about how adorable it was that I worried about Wile E. being safe.

Even at 8 (and younger), I knew that it was useless to correct him. He wouldn't believe me, for one thing, and he'd be offended at being challenged. So I rolled my eyes and let him chuckle.

It was just my luck that he was so tickled by this story that he told it over and over. Great, I thought. Now his friends and my relatives think that I'm a baby, with no grasp on reality. Fantastic. Prepare to be patronized. (I hated being patronized.) I did mention how it annoyed me to my mother, but she confirmed, "It's best to just let him enjoy the story, accurate or not." He died when I was 22, still telling the story. He loved that story, thought it was so cute. I never did try to set the record straight.

So, as a child, I knew that misunderstanding isn't always on one side, parent or child.

As a parent, I sometimes wondered what people were thinking when my kids said something that sounded ridiculous, but I knew was true. Sometimes, people would argue, even if the kids got it right. For instance, when my kids would say, "Santa doesn't come to our house," people assumed that we didn't celebrate Christmas, or that we'd had a severe financial hardship, or that my kids didn't think they'd been "good enough" to get any presents. What they actually meant was that Santa brought their presents to the family party, usually at my aunt's house.

Another time my kid got it right, but it sounded loopy, was after a theater company picnic. To celebrate the end of the summer season, the company always had a family picnic at a nearby lake. It's about an hour's drive away, but most of that hour is straight up into the Sierras.

One year, on the way to the picnic, we came across our friend's Volkswagen stopped on the side of the highway with its engine compartment open. We stopped and talked to Kahele, the bug's owner, and she said that the car was acting like it was out of gas, but it had half a tank.

"I'll bet it's vapor locking," my husband said, describing what happens when part of the engine is so hot that the gas evaporates before it can be utilized. The car was weighted down with passengers and several large, full ice chests. The combination of the climb and the load left the car struggling. My husband took the largest chest out and put it in our van, then scooped handfuls of ice onto the engine. "Try it now," he said.

The bug roared to life, and we followed it the rest of the way to the lake. It had no more problems.

A couple of weeks later, we went to a pool party for the same theater company. My sister's kids were visiting, so they got to come along. As we pulled up and parked behind the Volkswagen, my kindergartner announced to her cousins, "That's Kahele's ladybug. It had too much weight in it, and Daddy fixed it with an ice cube."

Well, pretty close! It still sounded like gibberish, but aside from the amount of ice, it was pretty spot on.

My son got lots of extra sympathy as an injured toddler, due to his linguistics. He rolled out of his toddler bed and broke his collarbone, at an age when he described everything that happened in the past as being "yesterday." Wearing his little sling with pictures of Snoopy on it, whenever anyone asked when he hurt himself, he'd say, "Yesterday," and they'd say, "OOOOHHH!" and fuss over him.

Of course, every person remembers and processes things differently, but occasionally, the way my child(ren) remembered something rendered the event unrecognizable.

When my sister got married for the second time, my 8 and 9 year old daughters hoped that they'd get to be flower girls. They were disappointed that even the bride's own daughters weren't getting to be in the wedding party, because they weren't having any attendants.

My sister and her fiance wanted a small wedding, and decided, after months of weighing options, to do a quick ceremony with a justice of the peace, and dinner at a hotel on the coast to celebrate. No invitations, no new clothes, no fuss. We all got phone calls - "I know you won't be able to make it, but we're getting married on Wednesday." As in, the coming Wednesday; as in, less than a week.

If we were to drive straight there (as our other sister did), it would take seven and a half hours. My husband was working 12 hour shifts, 3 am to 3 pm; he couldn't take time off on short notice unless it was an emergency. If we were to drive, it would mean three days - a drive day, the wedding day, a drive day home - and we didn't want to take the girls out of school for that long. Flying on short notice was expensive, but if only I went, it was doable. My eight month old could fly for free if he sat on my lap. So, my mother and I decided to fly; she rarely took any time off from work, but a single day off to see her daughter get married was worth it.

Since I was a stay at home parent, I'd have to figure out child care for the older children. If I could have flown straight there, it would be about 90 minutes each way, but the airport near my sister is a small, rural airport, and there were no direct flights from home. We'd have to fly for an hour plus to a large airport, have a layover, then fly for another hour plus to the small airport, which was still about 30 minutes from my sister's house, where we'd meet before driving to the courthouse. The flight I found that would get me (and my mother and son) there on time left at 6 am; we'd have to be at the airport by 5. With my husband at work at 3, that left my kids alone, which was unacceptable. I couldn't imagine asking someone to get to my house by 4 so that I could leave at 4:30.

My inlaws lived nearby, so I asked my mother in law if she could take the girls overnight, then get them to school in the morning. She had a spare room with twin beds, and was about 15 minutes away from their school. She agreed to take the girls, asking us to get them to her house by dinner time, so that by bedtime they'd be ready to settle in. Since they got out of school at the same time my husband left work 15 miles away, instead of having them walk home to an empty house, she'd pick them up from school, and my husband would come and get them from her house. "It's probably be easier if they just all have dinner here again, instead of Danny having to go home and throw something together on short notice," she said. After getting home, he'd then stay up past his own bedtime in order to tuck them in at their normal bedtime. We thanked her profusely for making the trip possible, and bought tickets.

It was a long day for us - up at 4, at the airport by 5, and we didn't arrive back home until almost midnight. Still, my mother and I got to be with my sister on her wedding day, I got to take photos, and my children were safe while I was gone.

A couple of weeks later, I was saying something about how stressful it was that the photo processor temporarily lost my sister's wedding photos - this was the days of film, and if the film was lost, they were gone forever. My daughter exclaimed, "You never told us that Aunt Lynne got married!"

"Of course I did. Remember wanting to be a flower girl?"

"No, you told us she was going to get married! You never said it already happened!"

"You knew when it happened. That was why you guys spent the night at Grandma Donna's - so I could go to the wedding."

"You WENT?"

"Yes. You knew that. That's why you stayed overnight at Grandma Donna's."

"We've never stayed overnight at Grandma Donna's!"

What? It had only been two weeks - how could she have forgotten? I assumed that her sister would set her straight. But one of the things that amazes and puzzles me to this day was the ability of these girls who bickered constantly to also think in lock step. One was convinced of her own infallibility, and one was anxiety ridden, so it was a fairly common thing for the force of one personality to overwhelm the other, but I'd never seen it to this extent before. Her sister took up the complaint - "You never told us! We never stayed at Grandma Donna's!"

That's weird, I thought, but I waited it out, knowing that one of them should eventually recall the event, if only to one-up her sister. We - the baby and I - had been gone for two nights worth of dinners and bedtimes. Grandma Donna had dropped them off AND picked them up from school. It just seemed impossible that they'd forget almost two entire days, even if they'd forgotten WHY I was gone.

Instead, as time went on, they embellished their tale of woe. They started telling people that I had dropped them at school, driven to the airport, flown to the wedding, attended the wedding - and, somehow, also dinner - but flown back in time to pick them up from school as if I'd never gone anywhere. They were convinced that I'd then tried to keep this a secret, and that they'd only found out by accident. Both of them were deeply convinced of this exact scenario. "And she won't even admit that it happened!"

At first, it was merely irritating, but then I started to panic. I know that people often repress traumatic memories - had something deeply horrible occurred at their grandparents' house, so terrible that neither girl wanted to remember it? And how could I ask my inlaws without being accusatory and offending them? I freaked out a little bit.

My husband brought it up in a roundabout way with his mother. "The girls don't even remember staying overnight at your house." She laughed, assured him that children's memories are notoriously unreliable, and remembered that they'd had a great time with her.

I still worried a bit, but I had to chalk it up to my kids just preferring the more dramatic story, and feeding off of each other.

I think they were teens when I finally insisted that they stop telling their version of this story. "It looked silly when you were little, but it looks sillier now." Not only could their dad, both of their grandmothers (who didn't agree on much), their grandfather, and both of my my sisters and their families confirm my version of events, and I had ticket stubs with times on them, the mere math was impossible. The time we spent in the air was close to three hours. The layover was an hour and a half. Add that to the hour, each way, that we had to be at the airports before the flights, and we were already at 6 1/2 hours, and their school day was 6 hours long. The flights alone were impossible to do in the length of a school day, to say nothing of drive time, wedding time and dinner time.

The kids were both incredibly puzzled by this fact, when I laid out the timeline, again. (When they were younger, they were sure that I was just misrepresenting how long things took.) "I was sure that (me being gone during school hours only) was how it happened." "I don't remember it that way." And each sister's absolute certainty had been bolstered by their sibling's absolute certainty.

"I know you don't. But that's how it happened." Sometimes, I think that they never did really realize that they'd gotten it wrong; they just stopped complaining about it around their parents.

I think of moments like this sometimes when I'm online reading. I was recently reading an online discussion/argument among friends of mine and flat Earth proponents. One of the flat Earth arguments was, "Why do astronauts' accounts of what it's like to be in space differ from each other? Why do they describe the sky using different adjectives?" Are they kidding?

Think about any event - that Thanksgiving when Uncle Joe passed out in the potatoes, the birth of your children, or even last year's garden or last night's dinner. Do the people who were there describe it the same way? Do they always even remember it? How many times does the average person say, "That's not how it happened"?

In actuality, everyone having identical stories is usually a sign that they've all rehearsed what to say.

Really, considering differing opinions or accounts to be the sign of a huge conspiracy is just outrageous.

"But people who say (X) are so sincere and convinced! And they should know!" people say to me. I'm sure they are. And yet, they could be wrong.

I never confused a live coyote with a cartoon one.

Keeping Up Appearances

I always wondered why my sister Lynne was so appearance conscious. Our mother wasn't. I wasn't. But Lynne very definitely was.

I have always been a function over form person. I really don't care what something looks like as long as it gets the job done. Like most kids in families of limited means, though, I was also very self conscious about anything that singled me out as poorer than the other kids, so I decided that that was what Lynne was thinking.

I was sure there had to be some environmental cause. I grew up believing that all taste was environmental. I have long since conceded that I was wrong.

My oldest daughter is so much more like Lynne than like me in her desire for impressive outward appearances. Since I was born when Lynne was 11, I didn't get to see her as a baby or toddler. I would watch Lana as a baby, displaying behavior that was totally foreign to me, and think, "Where did that come from?"

When she was only about six months old, Lana began to be stressed out by wrinkles in her crib sheet. Really. I would lay her down, and she would frown at the sheet, then begin making a frustrated noise as she smoothed her hand over the wrinkles, trying to wipe them away. Of course, even when she was successful in smoothing them out, any tiny move on her part would cause new ones. So, she'd start smoothing again, going, "Uh! Uh! Uh!" Thankfully, in fairly short order she would look away or be too tired to keep it up, and she would fall asleep.

She announced when she was barely two that she wanted to start going potty in the bathroom. I was sure she had no idea what that entailed, but after she hounded me for two weeks, I figured, fine. We'll see how this goes. It only took her a week or so to get it down to the point that she was dry all day. I was surprised and she was happy.

What annoyed her tremendously was throwing away the diaper she still wore overnight. After I took them off, I had always rolled up diapers and used the tapes to tape the bundle shut before throwing them away. I think most mothers do. It incensed Lana that she did not know how to roll them up herself and I refused to do them. I wanted her to take the diaper off herself and just throw it away. She hated that. It looked wrong! It was messy! She was totally undeterred by my insistence that it was OK for things to be messy in the garbage can. I wanted her to function independently, but she wanted things to look right.

At age two, she also started stressing out about wrinkles on her socks. You know how your foot is usually extended when you put your sock on, but when you flex it back or stand up, it creases across the front of your ankle? Lana hated that. It drove her crazy every day for literally years. She could not understand why this did not bother me, why I figured it was just OK to walk around in wrinkly socks. She dealt with this by pulling her socks up with great force many, many times a day. That stretched the socks out, sometimes to the point that the fibers were breaking, so now the socks not only wrinkled but sagged. This made her just about frantic. I wondered how many years it would take before she started taking our advice and just leaving them alone. Pointing out to her that our socks also wrinkled across the front did not appease her. To her, that was just proof that we were too clueless to know how socks should look.

In kindergarten she added a new sock worry. Now, it caused her a great deal of distress that the seam across the toes of the sock meant that the front end was more squared off than rounded. She would look at socks after she'd pulled them on and start making the familiar frustrated huffing sounds. "Look at that! They stick out!" she would say, pointing out some tiny protrusion or squaring off on either end of her toes. "They're fine," we'd say. "Socks do that." She became even more frustrated, wondering how her parents could be so utterly clueless.

Again, she dealt with the situation by pulling on her socks. She would grab the offending spots and pull them down under her feet, then carefully slide her feet into her shoes so the "corners" would be held down and out of sight. Naturally, this meant that getting her shoes on could take quite a while. And again, the major effect of this was stretching and pulling the socks out of shape, until the toe seams were two or three times the width of the rest of the sock. This did not actually bother Lana, because the wider the socks, the easier it became to wrap them around her foot.

She stopped being so obsessed with her socks quite so much about the time she started obsessing about the rest of her wardrobe. She had a very clear set of wardrobe dos and don'ts at a very early age.

During her kindergarten year, we bought a pair of ballerina flats that were, I thought, slightly large. They were on sale, though, and too large eventually becomes just right. When she put them on for school one morning, I asked if they fit. She assured me that they did, and I didn't think too much more about it in the morning rush.

When I picked her up that day, Terry and I were walking instead of bringing the car. I don't remember quite why. Even though we lived close to the school, we had to go down one of the busiest streets in town to get there. It wasn't exactly a serene stroll, so we didn't do it often. We set off for home, hampered by the fact that Lana's shoes came off every two or three steps.

At first, I thought it was some form of clumsiness. Then I started looking more closely. Her feet popped out of her shoes literally every step, and once out of every three or so times the shoes would fall all the way off. They were obviously still too big for her.

"Lana! Have your shoes been doing that all day?" I asked.

"Well, yeah," she said. "I tried to fix it." She slid her foot out of the shoe to show me that, across the bottom, she'd folded socks and laid them the length of the shoe to take up some of the extra room. "It didn't work, though."

"So your shoes have been falling off your feet every two or three steps all day today."

"Well, yeah."

"Lana! I asked you this morning if they fit! They obviously don't! Why would you wear shoes that are too big for you?"

She looked at me as if this was a patently stupid question. Then she looked down at her immobile feet. "Look how pretty they are," she said.

She went through a stage of insisting that everything she wore, even her underwear, had to be the same color. She started insisting that her hair be "done" for school when she was about seven. Ponytails were one of her favorite styles until she wore one for picture day in 5th grade. "I look BALD!" she shrieked when we got the photos back. "I look like I don't have any hair at all!" I don't think she ever wore a ponytail again. Dressing for the weather was always a problem; she would plan her wardrobe for days or weeks in advance, and was always thrown when told that she couldn't wear something because of the weather. She was happiest dressing in outfits that came with two pieces, so she was sure that everything "matched."

Coats were a constant struggle. "It's puffy! It makes me look fat!" she'd wail, at the ripe old age of nine and ten. We would insist that she leave the house in a coat in cold weather, knowing full well that she'd ditch it as soon as she was out of our sight. Terry, normally blasé about clothes, followed suit with a coat aversion of her own. It was maddening.

We'd get phone calls from friends, offering us coats for our kids. "They looked so cold walking home from school today," one friend said. When I told her that they both had coats in their backpacks, and that they refused to wear them until they were a block away from home, she thought that I was too embarrassed to admit that we didn't own any. Another friend refused to take my word for it, and simply showed up on our doorstep with hand me down coats for the girls. It wasn't the first, or the last, time we would be given coats. It didn't matter if we bought them or if someone else did, if they were new or used, Lana and Terry refused to wear them except in our presence. That problem wasn't solved until high school when they got letterman jackets. Those, they would wear.

Even into high school, Lana would try to put her clothing into "outfits." She would decide that a particular pair of jeans went with only two T shirts, and refuse to wear the pieces with other garments. We would tell her that jeans, any jeans, went with any of her tops, and she'd look at us as though we were crazy. We'd tell her that black and white went with any other color imaginable, and she'd look horrified. To her, black or white went with black or white.

When she was invited to her first formal, she insisted on extensive jewelry shopping, so she could find jewelry with stones the exact color of her dress. We told her, over and over, that pearls, diamonds, gold and silver would all be appropriate with a formal. She thought we had absolutely the worst taste imaginable. To Lana, you could only wear pearls if your dress had pearls on it; ditto for diamonds, gold or silver.

She was mortified when we couldn't find maroon shoes to go with her maroon dress and garnet jewelry. She was sure that her black shoes would look "stupid," and cause her to be a social outcast. She only wore them because it came down to wearing black shoes or staying home. She came back from the ball amazed: "There were other girls there in maroon, and they wore black shoes. There were girls wearing black shoes with blue and red dresses, too," she marveled. It has never done any good to point out that we knew this beforehand.

She still has trouble dressing for the weather. At college, she's been known to wear her favorite mesh slide shoes in six inches of snow.

While I take reasonable care not to look like a homeless person, I am not particularly "into" clothes. And with my children, the most important thing to me is that they function independently. As long as their clothing is clean and at least close to the right size, I will only veto it if it poses a health or morality issue. I don't care if my kids want to wear orange and purple together.

I once let my youngest daughter go to church in a Snow White dress up dress. When she put it on, I thought briefly about asking her to change. Then, I thought: it's a dress. It's clean. It fits. It's not too revealing. She looks adorable in it. Plus, she's 4 years old. So, she wore it, and actually got quite a few compliments. Life works that way when you're 4.

Poor Lana was always frustrated by my willingness to let her younger siblings dress themselves. She gave up trying to influence Alex too much, theorizing that, as a boy, he'd be hopeless about clothing issues. She would frequently tangle with Terry and Hallie.

Terry, being just a year younger, fared better than Hallie, upon whom Lana felt she could wield greater influence. Lana would try to coax very independent Hallie into clothes Lana had chosen for her. Their arguments would filter out into the hall and occasionally down the stairs.

"Honey, wouldn't you like to wear this shirt with those pants, instead?"

"NO!"

"But sweetie, these would look so much better."

"NO!"

It would finally drive me crazy enough that I'd intervene. "Lana! Go downstairs and let your sister dress herself."

"But Mom! She has no idea what looks good together."

"I don't care. Downstairs."

Poor Lana would sulk away, convinced that no one understood. How had she gotten stuck in a family of stubborn, styleless women, she wondered. And how could I not appreciate her efforts to "help" her sister?

Hallie is a bit older now, and often makes an attempt at matching her clothes. Still, she's young, and her choices don't always make sense to adults. In kindergarten, she wore her velvet dresses as everyday clothes, and chose sweatpants and a T shirt for picture day. Well, OK. It's her photo. She was clean, comfortable and happy.

A year later, she's in first grade and has just performed in her first school music program. She wore a pastel striped sweater under a denim jumper with red and black accents. Again, she was clean, comfortable, happy and even in a dress for a special occasion. She had a great time, and was very proud. We took tons of photos and clapped loudly. I just knew, though, that when I e-mailed Lana a photo at college she would groan and say, "Why did Mom let her wear that?"

Completely Normal

A family member and I were recently discussing our shared reaction to people who excuse unhealthy or toxic relationships by saying, "But we really love each other!" She and I disagree on many things, but on this she said, "We are so totally on the same page. All that I can ever think to say to that is, 'So?' or 'And...?'" Yet so many people deliver the "but we love each other" statement as though it is their trump card, their "get out of jail free" card. After all, what could someone possibly say or do that could defeat their love?

Defeat it, no; that's in their own hands. Dismiss or disregard it - yes, indeed. Volumes can and have been written about the thousands of factors that are vastly more important. Yes, more important than whether you love someone. There are those who think that this sounds like heresy. Yet, what would you say to a teen whose boyfriend beats her or threatens her with a knife? A wife whose husband sells her sexual "services" without her consent? To a child whose parent starves them or locks them in a closet? Maybe you're physically safe, but your partner belittles and mocks the majority of what you say and do, or controls all of the money or makes all of the decisions. Maybe all of those people truly love the one harming them; does that make it OK?

Another one of those trump card statements that people pull out as though it is the last and final word is, "But it's perfectly natural" or, "It's totally normal." Again, I find myself thinking and saying, "So? And...?"

Let's think about bodily waste for a moment. Your body - the body of any living thing - is designed to rid itself of waste. This is not only normal, natural, and determined by biology and therefore nonnegotiable, it's beneficial. If your body can't eliminate waste, it dies. People spend time hooked up to dialysis machines when their body's ability to filter and excrete waste breaks down precisely because without medical intervention, they will die.

Now let's think about babies. When they're tiny, their bodies excrete waste whenever it's done processing it, no matter where the baby is or what else is going on. We put them in special garments to contain the mess, and clean them repeatedly through the day. We are clear on the fact that this is necessary.

Before those children can consistently feed themselves, bathe themselves, dress themselves, brush their own teeth or communicate in complete sentences, we expect them to start regulating that waste removal process. We expect them to wait until a more appropriate time and place to pass their waste. We take away the special garments. We direct them to the rooms and fixtures set up specifically to handle waste. We make it clear that we expect them to wait for the appropriate time and place even when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable, even if they're tired, even if they don't want to.

Most children are not happy about this. It confuses them. It upsets and angers them. Why can't they keep doing it the way they've always done it? It was so much easier for them! And their parents never cared before - why do they care now? Sometimes it's so hard to wait! Sometimes they don't want to stop what they're doing; they want to wait until later. Why can't they? It's so mean of their parents to expect this and then be upset if the child does it the way they always have!

Keep in mind, they're not doing anything "bad." Their bodies must eliminate this waste. It's biology. It's necessary! And yet the adults want to put rules on it. It seems so unfair. Yet every adult will insist on this. Every child, except the extremely physically infirm, will leave diapers behind and learn to use a toilet, even when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable. How would we feel about an able bodied teen or an adult who wore diapers just because they wanted to avoid the inconvenience of toilets, and do it the way they did when they were born, the way all other living creatures do it, whenever and wherever the urge strikes - the natural way?

While they're still small, and increasingly as they get older, we expect more compliance. You will wear clothes when you leave the house. You'll be quiet sometimes when you don't want to be, because it's convenient for others. Many times when you're young, your parents will insist on things that you don't want, understand or agree with. But, the older you get, the more you will start to practice actual self control.

You will start to realize that there's reasons behind the controls you're asked to impose on yourself. You realize that, even though food is necessary to sustain life, that does not mean that you can eat whatever you want, whenever you want, in whatever quantities that you want. You become aware that, even if you're sincerely hungry, that doesn't mean that anything goes. Hunger is normal, eating is normal - in fact, essential - but there should be limits. We'd all love to eat anything we wanted - that feeling is totally normal - but we don't.

Even if you're not religious, think about those "seven deadly sins." Take sloth. How long would you last at your job if you didn't show up any time you'd had a bad night with little sleep? You're sincerely tired, maybe through no fault of your own (kept awake by a child, illness, noisy neighbors); your work may well be compromised. It's completely normal to want to roll over and go back to sleep - we've all been there - but you know that you have to show up. You know, too, that you don't get to pick and choose tasks. You can't say, "I'm only going to do things that I enjoy doing," at work or at home.

How about wrath? We're all clear on the fact that anger, no matter how justified, also cannot be simply set loose. You shouldn't engage in vigilante justice, revenge killings, drive by shootings, beatings. Even if your child or spouse or boss has done something infuriating, there are correct and incorrect ways to respond, and it's up to you to choose correctly. Even if someone has been fired, or killed, or hit by a car, or raped, or mugged, or deceived, or cheated, or anything else, that does not remove the controls you should put on yourself. We all know this. Those feelings are normal, but we control them.

We know, too, that it's not just actions, but words that we need to control. Just because something occurs to us, or is true, or would get a laugh, or is justified does not mean that we should say it. Irreparable harm can come from a totally unbridled mouth. From the time we're very small, we expect others to watch their words, and we learn to watch our own, through painful trial and error.

Greed is a little trickier, because society tends to applaud the pursuit of money, goods and status as being "ambitious" and good. We're all born greedy. Still, what if someone said to you, "I've been like this ever since I can remember. I remember being in diapers and not being happy unless I could take toys from the other children. I didn't want the toy; I just didn't want them to have it. I've never been happy unless I had more than the next guy. I'm always trying to figure out how to end up on top, how to charge more without delivering more. I try to stop, but it just sneaks in. Besides, it doesn't hurt anybody; I mean, anybody smart. If I can take advantage of someone, it's because they're not very smart. This is just how I am. I think it would be denying my true nature, not to mention futile, to try to be something I'm not." This is how we end up with the Bernie Madoffs of the world, not to mention every ruler or royal who ever funded a lavish lifestyle at the expense of the citizens that they govern. Most of us can still agree that this behavior, while natural and understandable, is wrong.

Violence, murder, spitefulness, taking unfair advantage, oppression, selfishness, bullying - the list of natural human traits, behavior that has persisted since the dawn of time, is huge. Yet we all seem to agree that these qualities should not be fed or embraced.

Let's go back to that recently toilet trained child to look at envy. Just about the same time that Mom and Dad have imposed all kinds of new rules and requirements - use the toilet, eat with silverware, say please, wait your turn - they also bring home a new baby. The baby does nothing but lie there, scream, eat and create messy diapers, but Mom and Dad just LOVE the new baby. So does everyone else. It's not fair! Why isn't anyone telling Preschooler how adorable they are just because they exist? Why does Preschooler have to wait for dinner, without even a snack, but the baby gets to eat every time it screams? Why is Dad's lap always full of the baby? Why does Preschooler have to use the toilet and sleep alone, but Baby doesn't?

It is completely normal that Preschooler will resent the baby. It is normal that they might want to hurt the baby, or that they will beg Mom and Dad to "send it back."  Almost every child in history has felt this way, and those born in the future will, as well. Yet, every adult knows, Preschooler cannot be allowed to act on those feelings; nor will Mom and Dad give in to the pleading, no matter how angry, outraged or unloved Preschooler feels because of their refusal.

(Many times, I picture the relationship God has with humanity looking a lot like the relationship parents have with small children. There are so many stupid rules, and they make no sense! Things would be so much better if we could just do it our way! How can God possibly know something that we don't? We're smart! He must not love us. He must be mean. If we could only do it our way, everything would be great, because doing it His way is stupid.)

Few things are as tedious as someone who never grows out of this sibling envy stage. Feelings that are totally understandable and justifiable when you're 3 or 4 look ridiculous on you when you're 15 or 16. Get to be 20 or 30 and still whine about, "Why are Mom and Dad so excited about Sister's promotion? They didn't say anything when I was promoted last year!" and I not only find you to be tedious and silly, but I tend to discount my assessment of your judgment and general maturity.

For some reason, we collectively tend to lose our minds a little bit when it comes to our sex lives, though. Too many of us seem to have no perspective.

There's those who find sex acts of any kind to be immoral, wrong, tawdry, indicative of lack of morals or character. That's silly. Whether you believe in God or not, the idea that the only way to perpetuate the species would be something wrong and forbidden, something we should not engage in, flies in the face of reason. This is why I don't agree with the idea that those who truly devote themselves to God and His purposes, or enlightenment in general, will be lifelong celibates. That's like saying that if we as a species truly devote ourselves either to God or to higher consciousness, the race will die out in a single generation.

Once when I said that to someone, they said, "That's because everyone isn't supposed to devote themselves to God. Only a few people will ever be asked to do that." That still seems silly to me. Maybe it's because I belong to a religion with no paid clergy. All adult members are expected to take their turn in leadership roles, without pay, throughout their lives. Even if this were not the case, the idea that the most spiritual, most dedicated of us should not have or raise children seems very odd.

Then there's the opposite extreme, people who promote promiscuity because "it's normal!" They find the mere idea that humans should be selective about their mating to be ridiculous and doomed. We're hardwired to mate with a large assortment of partners in order to guarantee numerous and healthy offspring, they say. It's millenia of evolution at work, and you can't fight it without facing futility and frustration. Why try? I don't buy this reasoning with regard to porn, either; don't tell me how it's existed throughout history. So has slavery, premeditated murder, con artists... you get the idea.

I'm always annoyed by promiscuous or straying men (or women) who become indignant when their partners leave them. They're just doing what comes naturally! It's normal! What is she so upset about?

"She knew what I was like before we got married," he might say. A man who thinks this way is ignoring two things. One: women are programmed to expect that, when they meet "the one," he will leave his tomcatting ways behind because of his love for her. Look through our culture's books and movies if you think I'm making that up. Two: very, very rarely have these men ever explicitly said, "I do not intend to be faithful." If they have, yeah, they can be annoyed if their partners get upset. If they're just functioning on the "she should know, because it's common knowledge" theory, they're not being honest with their partners or themselves, and they're behaving stupidly. Cards on the table, folks, always.

If monogamy is not important to you, only date or marry people who do not value monogamy. Or, resign yourself to living in a way that you find unnatural, because it's best for the relationship. No whining about what's "normal" or "natural."

It's a radical thought, based on the reactions I've seen, to believe, as I do, that sexual behavior is to be encouraged and enjoyed, even applauded, but only with one's spouse. There are those who don't bat an eye at people who have sex exclusively with stuffed animals, or with food, but find me to be bizarre. I find that reaction amusing.

Don't point out animal behavior to me in defense of yourself, either. You are not any of the species to which you are referring. We've all grown up watching dogs try to mate with human legs, furniture or toys. I do not feel that I, myself, need to say, "Well, if they've been doing it for centuries, it's normal behavior. I think I'm going to start mounting furniture, and claim that others are squeamish, prudish, anti sex, anti pleasure and repressive if they don't like it." I'm not going to start humping my husband's leg because schnauzers do it.

Personally, I have no quarrel with those who say that homosexuality is natural (as in, ocurring throughout time and across species). Still, from an evolutionary standpoint, it does not perpetuate the species or contribute to survival of the fittest by passing on genes. From a traditional Judeo-Christian religious view, it's scripturally condemned. Neither of those things are affected by whether it's natural.

I frequently face people who tell me that it's just wrong, repressive, manipulative, unenlightened and any other negative thing you can think of to go against, try to change or try to mitigate something natural, normal or inborn. I just don't get it. Aside from all those behavioral examples I just went through, how about physical things, things people are born with? Have you ever cut your hair? Do you trim your nails? Do you bathe? Do you wear clothing? Then you've tampered with the natural order. You've decided that the way your body is naturally is not necessarily desirable.

Do you wear makeup? Have you ever had braces on your teeth? Colored your hair? Then you're altering the way God or nature made you.

If your child was born with cleft palate or club foot, would you choose to have it fixed? If you are a Christian Scientist, or otherwise do not believe in any medical intervention, believing whatever happens to be God's will, I'll understand if you lecture me on not tampering with God's will (or Mother Nature or whatever other force you believe is most important). If you're an average person, and OK with tooth brushing, filling cavities, setting broken bones, taking antibiotics, using crutches and curling or braiding hair, I'm not really going to understand where you're coming from.

I've had pretty extensive surgery in the last two years, first to remove a diseased thyroid gland, and then to rebuild the bone structure in my feet. No one told me that since God made me, I was just perfect as I was, and I should simply embrace my bunions and collapsed arches. No one said that it was morally wrong, and setting myself up as a judge, to remove my thyroid. I didn't get lectures on the natural order of things when I had my tonsils out, or when I got glasses. No one said, "You don't need those! You are perfect just the way you are, and you should be proud of your astigmatism!" To the contrary, most people ask me why I don't switch to contacts or get lasik surgery.

ADD, ADHD, diabetes, hypoglycemia, depression, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, autism and more are all caused by body chemistry and determined, to a large extent, by your genetics. Nobody ever says, "Well, God wouldn't have put the voices in your head if you weren't supposed to heed them." We find it anywhere from unwise to criminal for someone to say that they will not address or treat any of these conditions in any way, or that they are God's will, or to say that humans shouldn't tamper with nature.

Given all that, I am beyond puzzled when anyone says, as someone did to me recently, during a disagreement about acceptable behavior, "Scientists have identified the gene/brain chemistry/etc that causes that!" as though I will immediately say, "Well, that settles it, then. If there's a physical cause, it must be desirable."

It's OK if we disagree about some of these things, or, heck, even if we disagree on everything. Each of us will one day have to account to God for what we do, but you don't answer to me and I don't answer to you. If you don't believe in God or in a Judgement Day, there's even less reason for us to be involved in each other's beliefs and choices, since our concern for each other's happiness will not affect eternal life. Just please understand that telling me how normal or natural something is not only does not end an argument, it doesn't even advance it. It's a non-issue.

All I'll be thinking is, "So?" Or maybe, "And...?"